What best describes supplier qualification and ongoing evaluation in AMQS?

• A. Only after a major incident.
• B. Initial qualification and ongoing evaluation are required to ensure supplier can meet requirements.
• C. Not necessary.
• D. Only for existing suppliers.

Answer: (B)

Ensuring supplier capability is essential to keeping airworthiness safe and compliant. Initial qualification verifies that a supplier has the right capabilities, processes, facilities, and quality systems to meet the required standards before you use them. Ongoing evaluation then keeps that assurance over time, with regular monitoring of performance, quality conformance, on-time delivery, and how the supplier handles nonconformances and corrective actions. This continuous oversight helps catch drift or deterioration in performance early and ensures the supplier can still meet the requirements throughout the relationship.

In practice, this means conducting supplier assessments or audits before approving a supplier, validating their ability to produce or provide what you need, and maintaining records of approvals. Then, through ongoing surveillance—such as performance metrics, periodic audits, review of quality data, and actions taken for any issues—you continuously verify that they remain capable and aligned with your expectations and regulatory demands.

Reactive approaches are insufficient because waiting for a major incident does not prevent risk to safety or airworthiness. Saying it’s not necessary ignores the fundamental need to validate and monitor suppliers. Limiting qualification to existing suppliers omits the preventive step of validating new suppliers and the ongoing oversight that should apply to all suppliers to protect the integrity of the supply chain.